When I opened my eyes, it was to thick beams of sunlight streaming through the open windows, casting an iridescent sheen over my room and making all my furniture sparkle like a million specks of diamonds had been sprinkled on top. 

Wearily, I sat up and tried to get my bearings. The first thing I noticed was how comfortable the ground was. Glancing down, the yellow and green flower pattern of my blanket met my gaze. I furrowed my forehead in confusion and surveyed my surroundings. The oak desk shoved into the corner of the room, the cabinet lodged next to it, the clustered bookshelf overflowing with bulging books and sheets of old homework sticking out, the glass globe paperweight on my bedside that doubled as a lamp…..this was definitely either my bedroom or a very convincing replica, which sparked a whole host of disturbing implications I would rather not get into. 

I rubbed my head, trying to nurse a burgeoning migraine. I felt like if I tried to get up, my legs would give out and I’d fall headfirst into my carpet. Weird, I’m not normally this tired when I wake up. What happened? 

More importantly, why did I feel so uncomfortable? I was rapidly becoming aware of an itchy sensation, like thousands of spiders crawling over my naked body with their spindly legs. And when I shook my head, hoping to be rid of an irritation near the base of my hairline, a light smattering of dust rained down and soiled my sheets. In fact, if I looked more closely, my entire bed was blighted with the same grime and filth. My nose wrinkled in disgust and I pushed off the bed, only for an excruciating cramp to seize my right hand and any attempt of standing up gracefully was aborted in favor of screaming. 

I collapsed onto the floor, the luxuriously silky-soft carpet cushioning my knees from further injury. Not that it prevented me from harming myself anyway when my legs lashed out and collided with my uncompromising wooden bed. My screams petered off to a pathetic whimper as I curled into a fetal position, the twin ache in both my legs and my right hand disorienting me. My budding migraine flared to vicious new heights, until it felt like my skull was going to break in two.

Maybe it was the pain that reminded me, but out of nowhere, I remembered the events of the previous night with crystal clear clarity. The torrent of memories came rushing back in droves, picking up where my last lucid memory had left off and filling in the blanks all the way up to answering the question of how I found myself swaddled up in a rough-hewn nest made from my comforter. 

I hobbled through the alleyway in a mystified daze, groping the filthy walls with my left hand in order to cope with the vertiginous sensation that had taken hold of my equilibrium and sapped me of my vigor. I swayed uncontrollably, bearing a striking resemblance to an inebriated drunkard. Nonetheless, I trudged along mindlessly. My body functioned on autopilot, tracing my steps with a little wheedling from Prometheus to set me straight when I wandered off the path. 

From the moment I stepped onto the streets, I felt, rather than saw, the innumerable intensive gazes boring into the back of my skull. Even in the nascent stage of the witching hour, Parokampos was packed with hordes of people hustling to their gigs and taking advantage of the brisk night breeze for a stroll. A tattered teenage girl in a school uniform stuck out like a sore thumb, and people weren’t shy in expressing their keen interest. Luckily, nobody mustered up the courage nor the time to actually interact with me, and I was able to reach the shuttle stop with little trouble.

Catching a late shuttle and ignoring the driver’s request to examine my student ID (not that it even registered in my impaired mind), I shuffled awkwardly to the nearest seat and plopped onto the velvet cushion, sprawling my gangly limbs every which way without regard for the other passengers. I slumped against the window, enjoying the pleasantly cool glass rubbing up against my cheek and trying not to doze off. 

What took place next was blurry, even by my current abysmal standards. I semi-recalled shambling off the shuttle at my designated stop by some miraculous stroke of luck and lumbering my way to my apartment. It baffled the mind how I didn’t slip and crack open my head when climbing the stairs, but I managed to reach my floor without dying. It took me several attempts to locate the correct door but after slapping my hand haphazardly against the handprint scanner situated next to the keypad, the metal barrier yielded and swung open.

The abrupt disappearance of steel underneath my hands took me by surprise and my arms, still expecting to face resistance from the door, careened forward. With a yelp, I toppled through the doorway and the unforgiving wooden floorboards rushed up to meet me. I laid on the floor like a particularly floppy, shapeless blob of wet seaweed, bemoaning the bruising that my chin had surely received.

I must have mustered the energy to inchworm up to my room eventually, but the actual process was all a big blank patch. Damnit, how exhausted was I? Although the conundrum of how I’d woken up bathed in a sea of cotton was solved, that still left the riddle of why I was outside during a school night. It wasn’t as if I possessed an abundance of friends to whisk me away from my studies, encourage me to dabble in some signature teenage rebellion, and waste the night away dancing. 

I distinctly remember crouching in a musky alleyway somewhere, and I believe I also saw a sleeping man nearby. Two widely disparate observations, that when put together, escalated the situation from disastrous to DEFCON 1. 

I tried to delve into the dilemma at hand, but my attempts were quickly rebuffed. When I pressed the matter, it felt as if there was a barrier obstructing me from unveiling the truth. Normally, I would have conceded the battle; clearly, my mind had seen fit to seal away this particular cluster of memories, and if the past six months had taught me anything, it was that my subconscious understood my limits better than I did. It would be unwise to test its verdict, and under typical circumstances, I would abide by its judgment.

However, this situation was far from being classified as routine. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would regret turning my back on this exotic sensation and returning to the stale, monotonous existence I called life, twiddling my thumbs and wasting away until I decomposed. Tossing and turning in bed at night, the words ‘What if?’ echoing in my mind as I sought to unwind time. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing away such a golden opportunity tendered to me upon an ivory platter. This was a chance to be greater, a call to action, to take up arms in service of the people, to contribute something actually meaningful amidst the boundless sea of trivial decisions and frivolous anxieties that seemed to have governed my life up to this point. 

An almost epidemic wave of frenzied desperation crashed over me and I seized the chance that was so munificently hoisted onto my person with both hands. Spurred on by delusions of grandeur, I prodded and interrogated the psionic barrier for any structural deficiencies I could exploit. It performed admirably under my probing inquisition, but my vetting was incited by a hysterical need to prove myself to all the naysayers. Six months worth of the pent up, bottled, vindictive fury of a jilted teenager was employed as the ammunition of a dominating trebuchet. Spite and dread was converted into a formidable siege machine that hurled tightly compressed boulders of despair at the barrier. Against all that, the collapse of the physic barricade was a foregone conclusion.

The persistent barrage weakened the structural integrity of the wall, and a crack formed. And like any overtaxed dam with a copious water buildup on the opposite side, a single flaw was enough to initiate a ripple-effect that saw the damage spread until it looked as if a cluster of arachnids had woven an elaborate cobweb to be draped over the mental fence. Predictably, it didn’t take much more for it to burst. The barrier fell, and like a tidal wave, a deluge of memories flooded my mind. It felt like a certified monsoon blew through and crashed down with the force of a rampaging mammoth, eroding my defenses in an instant. The events of the previous night poured over me like molten lava, scorching everything in its path. I never stood a chance. 

As the missing puzzle pieces clicked together before my increasingly nauseated eyes, I began to regret being so hasty to bridge the disconnect in my memory. Especially when the fruit of my mind’s labor revealed the unforgivable deed I had committed the night prior. I clutched at my head, begging my mind to stop remembering, to forget the painful recollections. I frantically grasped at the feeling of confused euphoria I’d experienced when I woke up, still in the throes of drowsiness and unsure of what had transpired. Being bewildered was infinitely more appealing than having to come to terms with all the horrible things that had taken place, but the sense of muddled drowsiness was fleeting.

All of a sudden, an overwhelming queasiness from the bowels of my stomach made itself known. Something acrid burned the back of my throat and that was all the warning I had. I glued my mouth shut for dear life as I sprinted for the bathroom, kicking open the door in my haste and skidding along the ceramic tiles. I’d just slammed the toilet lid up before my digestive system decided it was high time to expel the contents of my stomach. 

I projectile vomited into the porcelain basin, the unappetizing stream of semi-digested chunks and pasty yellow sludge splattering against the curved sides of the toilet bowl with the intensity of a railgun. I wasn’t exactly a novice when it came to hurling—there had been many sick days where one could be expected to find the stench of ejected chicken soup curdling in the air—but this level of fervor was a different beast entirely. 

My esophagus felt bruised and my jaw was aching like I’d just been slugged across the face. I was becoming increasingly aware of the clumsy position in which I was slouched over the toilet, my hunched spine squeaking in protest as my knees dug into the rigid checkered floor. My grip on the rim slackened before I caught myself and tightened my hold, only for the rapidly proliferating pool of perspiration on my clammy palms to start the cycle anew. I was simultaneously sweating profusely, enough to fill a bucket and then some, and shivering hard enough to set my teeth chattering. Caught in the middle as the two ends of the spectrum went to town wreaking havoc on my body, I couldn’t even react more than just hanging on for dear life as I was put through the wringer.

The tranquil, dewy morning air was defined by the birds chirping and heart-wrenching sobs, with the sound of guttural retching entangled within the grotesque melody. The minutes blurred into one another, but after what felt like an eternity, I’d depleted my stomach’s contents. Then I was merely bawling my eyes out into the toilet, the stank of half-digested macaroni making my head scream in agony and the all-consuming guilt nibbling at my soul. 

Finally, long after my tear ducts had dried up, I moved. My bones creaked like the rusted joints of an ancient, bronze automan stranded in the desert moving for the first time in a millennium. I felt absolutely dismal, ravaged both physically and emotionally. I flushed the regurgitated mess down the drain and hobbled over to my bed. The velvety cushioning of my comforter was a welcome reprieve from the solid, ceramic bathroom floor, but I could barely think right now. Everything was shrouded in a thick fog, like I was cut off from the rest of the world. I felt like I’d emptied out more than just my lunch; a hollow void had subsumed the place where my soul used to reside, and the vacuum ate away at me like a disease. I was….’detached’ would probably be the most apt description of my current state. Distant from the matter at hand, as if I was a spectator on the sidelines watching through murky lenses.

I rubbed my chest with my left hand, soothing my ailing heart back down to an average BPM. Checking the time on my digital clock, my eyebrows shot up when I realized it was 9:38 AM. First period would be finishing up right about now. My stomach twisted into knots at the thought that I’d broken my streak of not missing school that had lasted for 6 months, but compared to what happened yesterday, it was trivial. Laughable, really. It was a little comforting to see that I still worried about such mundane problems, but it was also disconcerting. How could I even think about breaking my streak when I murdered a man?

I sighed. Thinking about this on an empty stomach wasn’t going to help matters. My stomach gurgled in delight at the same time my chest clenched painfully. Those two men are never going to eat again, a droll voice in the back of my mind reminded me. 

You think I don’t know that? Piss off! I walked over to the door and clicked my fingers. The doors dutifully retracted into the wall, covering up the room again when I was on the other side. I eyed the room a few yards away warily; Amelia should be at school right now, and my parents were definitely at work.

Despite that, I found myself tip-toeing through the hallway, cringing whenever the wooden floorboards creaked. Once downstairs, I headed straight for the pantry and snagged a granola bar, ripping open the cheap plastic packaging and snarfing it down in seconds. Immediately, I pounced on another one, consuming it in a longer albeit still short period of time. The third one disappeared into my gullet like its predecessors, and it was only at the fourth bar that I assumed some semblance of manners.

My guilt was screaming at me, demanding to know how I could be starving when I murdered someone, but the voice was drowned out by the enthusiastic and content sight my stomach let out as its ravenous hunger was finally sated. Now that I was no longer hungry enough to eat a horse, the obvious question was what to do next.

My immediate thought was to come clean and confess to the authorities. If I plead self-defense, my age could grant me some leeway. I might be let off with some time in juvenile detention and heavy community service. All in all, it was far from the worst option presented to me. But then I thought about all the prejudice and bigotry that not only I, but more importantly, my family would receive from people and every instinct in my body repelled the suggestion vehemently.

Society in Parokampos was predominantly anchored around familial relations. If one family member broke the law, the ripple effect cascaded down to their immediate family as well. On the flip side of the coin, if a tragedy befell someone, their family could benefit immensely by possibly recovering welfare and compensation from the government, along with the positive stigma and attention heaped onto them by the citizens. It was a very astute double-edged sword that, in a so-called Haven, was used more frequently than it should have.

If I drew attention to myself for murder at such a young age, eyes would inevitably turn to my parents and condemn them for their poor parenting. They might even look to Amelia and wonder if it was only a matter of time before she also fell off the deep end. Some scumbags might dare to go after Alice as well.

I couldn’t do that to my family. Not after everything I’ve already done. I resolved to figure out another way to fix this problem, but the first thing I needed to do was change out of my current, debilitated clothes. I couldn’t bear to suffer through the intolerable itching for a second longer than was necessary, and even if I didn’t have time to take a shower, I had time for a quick wardrobe change.

Dashing upstairs, throwing away all pretense of prowling silently and instead having my footsteps thunder against the floor, I entered my room and flung open my closet doors. Fingering the rows of clothes I possessed, I shuffled through in search for a spare uniform. Finding one, I quickly discarded the uniform I was wearing and gently tucked it under my bed. Then I donned the new uniform, all while carefully avoiding glancing into the full-body ivory-framed mirror leaned against the wall. I didn’t want to see the poor condition I was in.

I made to leave but a stray thought stayed my hand. I vaguely recalled crawling back home, but there was an addendum to the memory that was only now making a resurgence. I scrutinized my armoire which had been shoved clumsily into the corner when I’d been rearranging my room and subsequently forgotten. I’d steered clear of the armoire—preferring to employ the closet instead, which was far less of a burden to manage the contents of—but the left door was slightly ajar. As if someone had been in a rush to stash something before they fainted.

Trepidation arose inside me as I inched closer to the armoire. The seemingly inconspicuous, wooden wardrobe suddenly appeared a lot more threatening: an impending final boss that acted as an impregnable clock, the seconds ticking away on a finite timer that marked the beginning of the end. My heart climbed into my bone-dry throat and I heard my pulse erratically pound in my ears, the weight of the beat shaking my entire world. By the time I stood in front of the wardrobe, I was profusely sweating. My trembling left hand wandered over to the door knob, brushing the plywood before retracting my fingers as if I’d been burned.

Had the armoire always been this tall? I shook my head to and fro, hoping to dislodge the very incongruous, silly thoughts that seemed to have found a secret passageway into the innermost private chambers of my cerebrum. I inhaled, trying to attain some semblance of clarity. When the fog in my mind began to settle, I flexed my hand, swallowed my reservations, and swung open the door.

I found what I’d expected to see: the missile launcher half-buried under a stack of spare clothes. What I hadn’t predicted was that from the moment I’d flung open the doors, the weapon had wasted no time in unleashing a salvo of persuasive suasion torpedoes, intent on ensnaring my consciousness. A veil of dense clouds descended upon my mindscape like the gates of a castle, slamming into the ground with a heavy clang! Everything went blank, and all I could think was how beautiful the weapon looked, how precious it was, how cool I would be with it cradled in my arms….

A frigid gust tore through the gates, sending them crashing to the ground and rending the false sense of security I’d been lulled into without mercy. A strangled gasp slipped out as I was immediately deposited back into reality; the mist surrounding me vanished with a puff and the environment rearranged itself, crystallizing into my armoire and room once more. I staggered, slumping against the wardrobe’s door as I tried to reorient myself. My thoughts were unbearably sluggish as I attempted to process everything that’d just happened, but it was like my systems couldn’t flush out the vestiges of the stupor fast enough to keep up with current events. I cast my gaze down and my heart plummeted.

My right hand was planted solidly against the metal carapace, fingers splayed out like I was trying to envelop every possible square inch. Even as the glacial alloy burned my hand with the numbing intensity of frostbite—the cold crawled under my skin, infiltrating my body, and laid siege against my hapless nervous system. The bitter chill permeated through my veins, freezing the blood solid and nipping one nerve after another, surgically severing my tissue’s connection to my brain like a platoon of legionaries mowing down a horde of barbarians. The slow march of death trampled across my axons; the second coming of the Ice Age sweeping across the land and leaving a winter wonderland in its wake—my palm obstinately remained firmly bonded to the missile launcher.

It took me smacking my suicidal limb with my left for my arm to finally drop. I’d intended on whipping my hand back but that plan went kaput when my arm simply nose-dived, swinging by my hip like a marionette whose string had been cut. My arm was dead in the water, unresponsive as a log. I may as well have chopped my arm off and zipped it up in a plastic bag for all the reaction that my actions sparked. 

Several, painfully long seconds passed, which I spent desperately applying revival techniques on my lifeless arm, before my sensory receptors finally kicked back online. I wasn’t sure how much of the credit should be assigned to my lackluster ministrations rather than to the apartment’s central heating system thawing the ice in my arteries, but I was just glad I could make my fingers twitch again. Although, the defrosting process was slow going—it began with a nominally slight throbbing in the bone, before escalating into a cascade of pins and needles washing over my arm. The sequence of warm stings prickled restlessly at my skin as the nerve endings there stirred to life; not quite enough to cause true discomfort, but enough for me to feel uneasy in my own skin. 

The whole time, I didn’t allow myself to take my eyes off the weapon. Even after my right arm had regained most of its mobility, I audited the missile launcher with a wariness that was customary of a gazelle observing a prowling lion. Despite my best efforts to ward off my mind, I could still feel the weapon’s pervasive attempts to penetrate my defenses, poking around my mental barriers for access. I was holding my ground thus far, but it was ultimately an exercise in futility. I was well aware that one slip up could spell the end of me. 

Currently, the weapon was playing the long game. It pressed itself onto my barricade with the same pontifical attitude of a fat cat draped leisurely over a windowsill, soaking in the sunlight—or in this case, sapping me of my mental juices. It was pretty clear from the start that the weapon was planning on waiting me out, evident by the fact that other than the initial barrage, it hadn’t been overbearing in its endeavors. Rather than crushing my paltry resistance in one go, the weapon harnessed its considerable weight to constantly apply creeping pressure in tiny increments, always ensuring the pace was slow enough that I could acclimate just barely in time for the next uptake in power

If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought the weapon possessed quite the sadistic side.

Saying I wasn’t tempted to close the armoire and abandon the apartment would be a lie, but I couldn’t just leave it in my wardrobe. It was a small miracle that the GDM hadn’t come busting through the door while I’d been asleep. Leaving the missile launcher swaddled up in my baby clothes was analogous to marching into the GDM’s district headquarters and leaving a statement confessing all my crimes. If I fancied enjoying my eighteenth birthday as a free citizen, then I needed to dispose of the missile launcher on my lonesome.

Fast as a viper, my hand darted out and in one fell swoop, managed to snag the coat that the missile launcher was resting on top of. The weight of the weapon caused the fabric to immediately dip, leaving me holding a bulging sack. With a nimble dexterity that came by perhaps once every second blue moon, my fingers flew across the wool until I’d succeeded in tying shut the top. The effect it had was readily apparent; the weapon’s call waned after being sealed off. 

I hastily composed myself, swung the bundle under my arm, and strode down the stairs. A part of me desired nothing more than to plop myself down on a couch and remain seated until my parents returned home, where I would spill all my secrets. Maybe even have them comfort me and hold me again, like before the Diablerie Invasion. It was appealing, to be able to cast off any responsibilities and go back to being a kid, but I didn’t deserve that right. Nor could I simply dump my burden onto my parent’s shoulders. No, I had to resolve this myself, and I wasn’t going to accomplish that lounging in my house. 

I fought the urge to cast a final mourning glance over my house. This isn’t going to be the end. I vowed, but my voice rang weak. Hunching my shoulders, I walked over to the door and opened it. A blast of brisk, glacial air splayed my hair flat against my forehead. Feeling my face swiftly fall numb, I quickly released the door and let it shut behind me with an ominous click. Trying to shake the feeling that I’d just doomed myself, I abandoned the automatically-locking door and set off for the nearest shuttle.

I didn’t have the foggiest clue what I was going to do, lugging around a missile launcher and boarding public transport. All I knew was that staying home would just incriminate my family further, and I had an obligation to the man I’d…..killed. I had to set things right, and returning to the scene of the crime might allow me to glean keener insight. It was a shot in the dark, if the ‘dark’ was an eldritch shadow swamp where hope went to be devoured and dragged underneath a marsh of bubbling tar

Like the night before, I received a couple of scattered leery stares, but for the most case, I was ignored. Seeing a student skip class or be late to school wasn’t out of the ordinary, even in Parokampos. Yet every noncommittal glance felt like an accusation burrowing past my skin, a wayward twinkle in the eyes of the teenage boy sitting opposite of me feeling like an unspoken warning. Despite my underlying worries that the shuttle’s alarms were seconds away from flashing red and signaling the authorities to  the shuttle screaming for my arrest, the shuttle chugged along without a problem and before long, it slowed to a stop in its slot located in the station next to my school. 

I felt like the walls of the shuttle were shrinking in on me, pinning my bottom to the plump seat. The oxygen in the shuttle evaporated, leaving me gasping for air like a fish on land. I clutched at my chest, scrunching up the blazer under an iron grip. My chest heaved up and down as I tried to take in as much oxygen as possible, but it never felt like enough. Although I was situated on stable seats, I felt like I was going to plunge to my death at my second. The shuttle interior swam in front of my eyes, the faces of concerned passengers blurring into a sea of spine-chilling bleary eyes and mouths and noses and ears. 

I shivered and recoiled as one of the faceless masses came closer, one of their blue eyes significantly larger than the other and a sagging, tomato-red squashed sack of meat where their nose should have been. Their mouth was a cavernous black hole, stretching and twisting so disproportionately that it looked better suited on a monster. In fact, everybody looked like their human features had been stripped away and their limbs had been stretched beyond their elastic limits until they resembled a crowd of Slendermen, bundled together like a crooked forest of lanky trees.

The outlines of the mouth/gaping void wobbled anxiously, and rationally, I knew that they were most likely asking if I was alright. However, that wasn’t what my panic-stricken ears heard. 

Why did you do it? Why did you kill them? Murderer. Murderer. MURDERER! The jarring baritone timbre rang in my ears like a persistent stalker, reverberating and bouncing off my skull until it was all I could hear. That damned, accursed word, the horrific label that I couldn’t refute: murderer. 

“Stop,” I moaned, wearily smacking away prying hands. In my deluded mind, the offending appendages assumed the shape of eldritch tentacles, floundering and thrashing with zeal as they tried to entangle me. I shuddered with thinly concealed disgust when a stray tentacle managed to skim my unprotected forearm. I automatically lashed out, hitting the tentacle and watching it retract with grim relief, even as an ‘Ow!’ was audible in the throng of monsters. 

I couldn’t bear it. Gathering my nerves, I flitted my eyes to the white floor of the shuttle and jumped off the chair. The huddle of monsters stumbled back and I took the opening for what it was, squeezing and squirming a path through the horde. Every time I felt a tentacle slap my exposed flesh, I quelled an involuntary tremble and made an oath to scrub my skin red once I escaped this hellhole. The swarm of monsters seemed to concede defeat when I was locked in the middle, beginning to disperse and slink back to their seats. It struck me as odd why monsters would have seats on the shuttle, but it was such a trifle vexation compared to everything else that I discarded it.

Reaching the door, I slammed my hand onto the glass plate next to it repeatedly until pangs of muted pain shot through my palm. The ruckus I was emitting filled the entire shuttle, but I hardly cared. The monsters’ interest in me could reignite at any moment, but the doors remained stubbornly shut. Finally, with a hiss as air slipped through the sudden slit, the doors fastened in place for a heart-palpitating millisecond before sliding open completely. The instant a gap large enough for me to fit appeared, I dove through and nearly landed on someone who had been waiting mere feet on the other end. 

There was a mad scramble to untangle myself from the jumbled briar of interlinked limbs. My flagellating arms knocked into someone’s leg and a body fell to the station floor with a thud. Cue several more people tumbling to the ground as a cascading domino’s effect was initiated, littering the floor of the station with fully grown adults acting like rowdy children. Through the entwined mess of flailing limbs, I caught a glimpse of several people standing at the outskirts of the disaster zone, failing to conceal their laughter behind polite hands raised to their mouth. Others who were less inclined to maintain some standard of social norms and integrity had their phones out, the unmistakable bright flashes of photos being taken bathing the open station in light. A few unsavory words were detachable as the people caught in this sticky situation realized they were most likely going to be featured on the trending page before the day was over.

I didn’t care about any of that. I wanted to scream at the folks simply standing there without a care in the world, warning them about the horrors that dwelled inside the shuttle, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I swallowed the rigid lump, feeling it travel down my trachea, stretching the confines of my neck along the way, before settling into my stomach like a boulder. My supple frame allowed me to slip through the enclosure of body parts and stumble into one of the photo-taker’s arms. 

He let out a surprised cry that quickly shifted to rage when I accidentally knocked his phone out of his grip. He all but dropped me onto the floor in his haste to chase after his phone before it was lost in the swarm of winding legs marching on incessantly. I landed on my knees and hands, a white-hot twinge of pain ripping through my right hand the instant I put my weight on it. Biting back tears, I clambered to my feet, shoving the offered helping hands jammed into my face away, and pranced into the cluster of people. The station was swiftly getting congested as more people waiting for the shuttle congregated at the scuffle, curious to scratch their own curious itch.

I didn’t know any of this, because I broke out into a sprint. All I cared about was that I put as much space between me and that hellhole of a shuttle that disguised itself as a customary transportation method. A part of me wept for the dozens of people I saw in the station that were going to meet an untimely death at the tentacles of the eldritch horrors, but there was nothing I could do to convince them without sounding crazy.

My feet pounded against the steel floor of the station before transitioning to the pavement of the sidewalk, sending jolts up my ankle. I let my body take over, allowing my mind to sink into the deluge of bubbling anxiety and retreat from the glaring noises and sights of the city that were like nails being drilled into my skull. My legs burned and every breath felt like it was getting dragged out of my chest, but I didn’t relent in my ruthless pace.

I shut my eyes but while it succeeded in blocking out the epilepsy-inducing bursts of neon color, it didn’t spare me from the shrill whines of the city’s intercom system announcing the daily forecast nor the babble of hundreds of people having their own, separate conversations, or even the crowing of birds who perched on the oak trees and liked to study the humans below with a mischievous gleam in their black speck of an eye. The monsters’ allegations rang in my ears like a gong, filling my mind in a loud droning that pervaded every corner of my consciousness, highlighting all the harsh edges and angles of my inner landscape like glass shards jutting out from red-touched sand.

I ran and ran and ran until each inhale felt like jagged shrapnel worming closer to my heart and lungs, and the sole of my feet were decorated with furious blisters and welts, the slightest motion resulting in a flash of affliction seizing my feet like a bear trap. I staggered to a stop, resting on a wall as I tried to catch my breath. My chest heaved up and down, and for a millisecond, I worried that my heart was going to burst. A surge of nausea swept over me, and I doubled over, placing my hands on my knees and trying to breathe through my nose like I’d been instructed by my band director. 

Her advice came to me now, penetrating the barricade of queasiness and agitation with ease. Calm down. Control your breathing: In, out. In, out. In through your nose, out through your mouth. I know you’re tempted to gulp in as much air as possible, but that won’t help. In, out. In, out. Keep your head down until your mind starts to clear.

I did as she instructed and my breathing gradually evened out to a more stable BPM. My heart no longer felt like it was going to crush my rib cage into fine powder. Carefully, I raised my head, prepared to lower the instant I felt the stirrings of a migraine, but I stood tall. My legs continued shaking like telephone poles in the middle of a hurricane and my chest still ached, but I wasn’t about to keel over and die any time soon. Suddenly, I was consumed by an overwhelming burst of nostalgia and loss, tinged with gratitude. I missed the music department. I wonder what the girls on the team thought of me now; surely they’d heard the rumors.

As I cautiously exited Fight-or-Flight mode, snippets of the shuttle ride returned to me in flashes. My cheeks burned when I realized that the unearthly monstrosities had, in fact, been humans, and I was ready to make like an ostrich and find a nice patch of sand to bury my head in when I remembered the chaos I’d brought about at the station.

“Nooooo,” I bemoaned, burrowing my head into my left hand. “Kill me now,” I pleaded. At least then I wouldn’t have to live with the embarrassment of the spectacle that was no doubt going to be plastered all over social media. I wouldn’t be surprised if the official city news anchorage covered it as well. I did have dreams of being presented on the news when I was younger, but this was now how I’d envisioned it. I would never be able to live this down.

If I had a life to go back to.

As the prickling humiliation subsided, and the cold reality of my situation slunk back to retake its place, I took notice of my location for the first time. It didn’t take long for me to realize I’d overshot my original goal of the alleyway by a mile. My surroundings were vaguely familiar, as if I’d traveled down this route many times in my childhood, but it wasn’t somewhere I frequented. There was a noticeable dip in maintenance compared to the hectic central business district and more sedate residential areas, as if the government couldn’t be bothered to apportion taxpayer money for the upkeep. By no means did that mean it was shabby or neglected; it wasn’t like the alleyways. Rather, it wore a rugged, almost roguish look with pride. 

This district’s overall appearance and atmosphere felt like it was paying homage to the archaic architectural touches that had been all the craze several decades ago. Trading in the sleekness and polished presence that Parokampos strived hard to maintain for a more robust, sturdy, and cast-iron system. It was a district of forged steel and melted iron, discarding the comforts that the rest of Parokampos enjoyed. The district absolutely reeked of a rich, metallic odor, a sure sign that the air purifiers were disabled. Fancy skyscrapers became a rarity while stout warehouses were the norm. Everywhere I looked, I saw people toiling away in grease-stained overalls, their bare arms revealing rolling muscles that rippled in the winking sunlight. The sun beat down on the district grimly, blessing its denizens with a striking, golden-brown tan, the likes of which beach dwellers could only fantasize about possessing in their wildest dreams.  

The air was alight with the low rumble of heavy machinery, the high-pitched screeching that followed an angle-grinder deburring the surface of steel desks, the powerful clang of hammers pounding metal into submission, the blasting roar of furnaces churning out molten slag and the delicate whirring of miniscule pieces clicking into their place inside of an opulent pocket watch. The highly divergent sounds melded together into a beatific warble, something that had no right to sound as melodic as it did while being the progeny of a myriad of willful noises. A nearby glassblower wove white-hot filaments of glass into girthier ropes, threading the viscid material through his thickly-padded gloves and whipping it around casually like it was a string of toffee, working his magic as he molded the formless mass into a masterpiece. As I watched this haven of artisans and craftsmen work in flawless harmony, each artist demonstrating their expertise in their respective field, I remembered why I felt so acquainted with this district. And with that knowledge, it was like a light bulb went off in my brain.

I eyed the bundled up missile launcher through new lenses. Before, I’d smuggled the weapon onto the shuttle with me solely because I had no intention of leaving damning evidence where my family lived. Other than that, there hadn’t been much cognitive power behind the decision. Now though, there was a new path available to me. One that satisfied the need to liberate me from this cumbersome weapon, and also tickled my own selfish desires. The weapon flared indignantly at the less-than-flattering label it’d been saddled with, but I was able to ignore it much more easily now that there was something else to focus on.

The beginnings of a plan began to cobble itself together, and my mind raced as I contemplated all the possibilities. If I remembered correctly, it was only a couple of miles from here, and it should contain all the tools I needed to complete the task I had in mind. It was also off the grid (or at least as ‘off the grid’ you could get in Parokampos), and it was fairly secluded. Even if the worst came to pass, I could cloister myself away and fortify the defenses to—Okay, maybe deciding to go full renegade against the police isn’t a good idea, but the rest stands true. Besides, it’s not like I can do anything with his corpse anyway. Even if it’s still there, I can’t exactly give him a proper burial without raising a shitton of eyebrows. 

There was a not-insignificant part of me that questioned if the true aim behind wasn’t to atone for my crime, but to indulge in my selfish craving to dismantle the missile launcher. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted by the once in a lifetime opportunity, but there really was nothing I could do for him. Realistically, I knew and accepted that. So why did I feel like a horrendous pit had opened up in the bottom of my stomach? 

You know why. You’re scum—you judge people for abandoning those in need, but at the slightest chance of satiating your thirst for knowledge, you do the same. 

Something in my chest clenched and my breath caught. I inhaled deeply before exhaling; the trapped air within rattled my ribcage. My breathing was unsteady, shaky even, as I wheezed and panted like an asthmatic on the brink of a relapse. Every tentative, shuddering breath was another flaming rod stabbed into my heart. My lips were criminally parched and my throat was closing up. I scrunched my eyes shut hard enough to send black dots dancing across my smothered vision, trying not to capitulate to another trip down memory lane. Unconsciously, I bared my teeth.

“No,” I murmured, low and dangerous. “I am doing this for the betterment of everybody. It’s the only logical course of action. Doing anything else would be foolhardy. This is how I’ll fix things.”

How many times will you need to say it before you start to believe it? 

Opening my eyes, I boldly ignored the unabashedly open stares leveled towards me. These people could care less about etiquette and putting on a front; they saw someone acting like an eccentric elderly with peculiar tendencies, they weren’t afraid to wonder what manner of strange creature fate had dragged into their abode. I was just grateful they hadn’t resorted to calling me out, but I didn’t want to test my luck. Fighting the urge to duck my head, I strode through the busy streets unflinchingly, hoping to project an nonchalant aura by pointedly not looking anybody directly in their eyes. Of course, the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that the tips of my ears were burning bright red, but it didn’t really matter. Once they were confident that the oddity wasn’t here to filch trade secrets for a rival firm, they returned to their business. 

Regardless, I picked up the pace and booked it out of there. I was burning sunlight and I didn’t want to see if my inexplicable streak of dodging the police would continue well into the evening. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before my adrenaline ran its course and blinding agony spliced the side of my abdomen. An emphatic ‘fuck!’ tore out of my throat before I could stop myself, drawing even more unamused glances. Still, I couldn’t help it when it felt like someone was gouging a yawning hole out of my midriff with their bare hands. All too soon, I was reminded why I had forgone an offer to track the track team without hesitation. 

Nursing the mother of all stitches, I hobbled through the district with a far more sedate gait than I would have liked, but any more strenuous activity and my lungs would implode. Although I was still making good progress, I was haunted with the enduring fear that I would hear sirens pierce the din any time now. And the solitude of walking alone was beginning to get to me; the guilt I was barely keeping at bay continued to gnaw on me, chipping away my crudely constructed assurances. My resolve didn’t waver, per say, but it definitely fidgeted. I shook my head, gently slapping my cheeks a couple times. 

I needed something to take my mind off things, and I had just the spunky character to do the trick. Of course, calling Prometheus ‘spunky’ was a blatant stretch of that word’s definition if I ever heard one, but it was the thought that mattered. Though, now that I gave the matter more consideration, the nigh-omnipresent AI had been suspiciously shy in offering its sagely advice. 

Maybe you successfully drove ‘it’ away as well. 

No, no, no. That couldn’t be it. There had to be another explanation. I fumbled through my pockets, retrieving my phone and holding it to my trembling lips. The first time around, my voice cracked in my panic and haste. Forcing down the urge to scream profanities at the top of my lungs, I took the time to enunciate every syllable, despite every impulse in me demanding that I hurry up. “Prometheus.” There. Short, simple, and intelligible. It should work.

Except it didn’t. Bottling the rising terror, my eyebrows crinkled in confusion and I examined my phone with more scrutiny, hoisting the phone in my hand and turning it over as I inspected every ridge and nob that embellished the device. Nothing seemed out of place, but Prometheus was disquietingly reticent. 

I pressed the tip of my finger to the nob, feeling the microfibers swish over my flesh with the benign tenderness of a toddler. A thin strip around the circumference of the nob flashed blue and a faint humming noise filled the street. It was almost as if my phone was undergoing a full reboot in order to rouse Prometheus from its slumber, but that wasn’t how it should go. Prometheus was always lying dormant in the uppermost layers of my phone’s database. The inert AI deviated an infinitesimal amount of its vast processing power to regulate the phone for any inkling that I needed its help, while also remaining ‘asleep’ in the mainfare. A full reboot was only required when a system-side software update was available that Prometheus couldn’t install on its own, or if there was a virus that needed to be purged immediately.

I tried not to get too worried; Prometheus would inform me of what had happened the instant it got back online. Still, the chain of peculiar events happening in quick succession was enough to raise anyone’s eyebrows, even without taking into account the severity of the circumstances.

I almost wept when Prometheus’s reassuring, mechanized voice replaced the low droning. “Greetings, Elysia. How is your day?”

“G-good—wait, never mind that, what the hell happened? Did you get deactivated somehow? Did a virus infect you?” I blurted out. Both theories were far-fetched at best. The degree of tech savviness required to assemble a virus that was able to pierce the top-tier software firewalls this particular phone employed was rare, especially if you took into play the time it took for the virus to take effect. Definitely not the type of talent that you would find in an alleyway where the best equipment one could get would no doubt be some left-over garbage scraped together to create something remotely resembling an adequate hacking setup.

“I believe it was the encounter with the Magical Girl. The last thing I remember is your interactions with her after she murdered a man. Everything went black, and I was unaware of my surroundings until I was called back by you. I sincerely apologize for any inconveniences I may have caused you with my absence.” Prometheus explained.

It was like my head got dunked underwater; the world erupted into thousands of craggy, polychromic, variegated geometric shapes all clashing and clamoring to be the presiding configuration. My ears popped and it sounded like a freight train had just rang its blaring horn inches from my head with no compunction about the upper limits of a human’s auditory capacity. I felt like hundreds of cubic gallons of water had crashed down around me, torrents of liquid rushing into my ears and to my brain, drowning out the rest of the world in an oscillating roar that was somehow both soft and booming. 

How dare she mess with the only person I could consider a friend? It wasn’t enough that she had completely devastated my soul; she had to take it a step further, and prove her superiority by displaying just how easily she could disable us. Was she insinuating that we were ants and she was a boot? It was an unnecessary showcase of power. I already knew just how powerful a Magical Girl could be, standing heads and toes above the rest of humanity. They played on a different field than the rest of humanity, but that didn’t permit them to go around screwing with people who couldn’t fight back for fun! 

Prometheus was saying something. With great willpower, I pulled myself back from the edge of the thundering waterfall and forced myself to listen to the AI.

“—believe it was the Familiar who shut me down. It’s in line with the recorded capabilities filed under the Familiars. It is most likely a standard safety procedure to prevent me from eavesdropping.” Prometheus reasoned, its cold logic breaking the event down to its base parts.

My anger didn’t abate. “They shouldn’t have done that,” I insisted. Shutting and turning off Prometheus as callously as someone would flick a switch was a blatant disregard for the AI and all its services to Parokampos. The AI may not be ‘alive’ in the general sense, but it was still a contributing member of society that deserved to be treated as such!

“I am well aware there are many individuals who still hold grudges and reservations against me for my actions 20 years ago. I understand this, and have dedicated the rest of my existence to amending my errors.” Prometheus reassured me. Its attempts only stoked the flames of my rage. No! Prometheus was trying its best to atone for its actions, when people couldn’t even decide what it had done wrong! It was so painfully subservient, yet people abused that quality to step all over the AI! It was inhumane, it was cruel, and it had to stop. 

I could stop it.

My resolve turned to steel. I pulled my shoulders back and puffed out my chest. I dug my shoes a little more into the ground, scuffing the toe cap against the concrete, and clenched my left hand into a fist. My body quivered with barely restrained seething, lithe frame unable to quite contain all of the downward spiraling escalator of boiling enmity. I stormed towards the terminal that would serve as the venue of my experimentations.

“Are you alright, Elysia? I am apprehensive about your unusual behavior. Did something happen while I was absent?” Prometheus interjected.

A bitter laugh bubbled up and broke free from my mouth. What hadn’t gone wrong? I wanted to convey the anguish I’d experienced, the inordinate amount of self-loathing and worthlessness the Magical Girl inflicted on me as viciously as if she’d raised a hand against me. How I wanted nothing more than to prove her wrong, yet at the same time, to hide under a rock until I perished from starvation. The absolute dismay that plagued me was one thing, but far worse was the feeling of diminutiveness she’d cast on me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was little more than a speck of grain in a vast desert, no more consequential than a random pebble planted in a crack in the road. That no matter how hard I tried in life, I would never amount to anything.

There was no possible way I could describe that in mere words, the cumbersome and rudimentary method of communication they were. So clunky and tedious; the true meanings often lost during translation. But I didn’t need Prometheus to understand the emotions behind my decision; I just needed the AI to acknowledge my thought process.

The current Zoe—the new and improved Zoe with dozens of like-minded friends and boys who hang off her every word—didn’t share the same honor in my mind. The mere thought of her becoming a Magical Girl was aggravating beyond belief, especially when I remembered all the times she’d rolled her eyes condescendingly when I went on a Magical Girl rant. Someone like her didn’t deserve that privilege.

Deep down, I was aware that what the Magical Girl had warned me about was coming to pass. My newfound hatred for my once-best friend that bordered on fanatical was a far cry from my wistful feelings for her 24 hours ago. Learning that she—not me—had the potential to become a Magical Girl was infuriating enough. The realization that she would always flounder, squander it, waste that priceless prerogative due to some futile desire to maintain the purposeless status quo….it made me want to rip my hair out and stuff it down her throat. 

No. Zoe didn’t deserve that power, and she didn’t want it. Maybe destiny hadn’t intended for me to be a Magical Girl—its cruel machinations had instead placed someone who wanted nothing more than to be special next to somehow who couldn’t help but be special—but that didn’t mean I was destined to be reduced to sitting in a seat in the spectator stands. Before Magical Girls, there were still heroes of exemplary valor and courage who carved their story into the bedrock of humanity, whose signature could be found between the lines chronicling humanity’s greatest achievements.

Maybe I could be one of them.

“This is outside my area of expertise, Elysia. I have not been programmed to deal with this. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Prometheus prodded after I went through a quick rundown of the discussion—if you could even call it that—which had taken place after its compulsory deactivation. The AI had been mute for several minutes afterward, but I chalked that up to it still mulling over the violation it’d suffered through. I was feeling pissed off on Prometheus’ behalf, and I hadn’t even been the victim.

“No,” I answered truthfully. The admission shook me, but I braced myself. I wasn’t going to turn back now. “But I don’t have a choice.”

The pangs skewering my side was sentenced to the back of my mind as boiling loathing replaced it. I strode with purpose now, contempt making my heart beat faster and abhorrence turning my legs into well-oiled walking machines. I was weightless, carried atop a cloud as thunderous as my mood was. Prometheus was unusually conversational today, making the occasional odd remarks that poorly concealed the AI’s reluctance with my plan. If I didn’t know better, I would have been offended that Prometheus seemed to doubt my capabilities. Instead, its uncustomary skepticism fanned the embers of my rage. Clearly, it was still reeling from the flagrant breach in conduct that the Magical Girl had committed. 

The sun reached the crest of its climb and bathed me in its light, illuminating the way forward. The industrious sector faded out of view behind me, and with it, the racket. There was a noticeable shift in the atmosphere; a brewing tension pressed down on the interscapular region between my shoulder blades, unforeseen ridges digging deep into my flesh. I let out a strangled choke as the air grew thick, snatching the oxygen out of my lungs. A tangible weight bore down on me and my knees almost buckled. Or maybe that was my overtaxed body finally calling it quits.

Regardless, it was no small relief to see the familiar structure looming in the distance. Menacing fences kept a formidable vigil, solitary sentinels safeguarding their charge. Stout and tempered steel bars kept any would-be interloper out, but I had the advantage of being in the know. Climbing the fence would be an exercise in futility—they towered over me at ten feet tall—but there were other ways in. I locked onto a particular segment of the fence where the bars bent at an awkward outward angle, deviating from the scrupulously measured intervals of four inches spaced out between the rest of the rods. Not by much; it was only around double the size of the other interruptions in the fence, a modest gap of around eight inches, but it was enough to fashion as a makeshift hole.

I dipped my head and grabbed the rusty metal with my hands, sticking one leg into the aperture before following that with my torso. Taking care not to bump into the bars, I suffered some minor discomfort by entering into various uncomfortable positions, all for the sake of trying to avoid the dreary fate of being inflicted with tetanus. With some cajoling, I was able to twist the rest of my body through the orifice like some wannabe contortionist. 

Once I popped out the other side, I didn’t waste a beat. Leaving behind the antiquated hedge, I faced my next opponent: an obstacle course comprised of dozens of inoperable heavy-duty vehicles. Abandoned by their drivers in fluctuating states of disarray, some showed their age via moldy moss encroaching onto the dented shell encasing the construction equipment, while others were a hair's breadth away from crumbling apart due to the egregious amount of rust that had piled up. Almost like a second coating of orange-brown paint had been layered over the once-electric yellow makeup, the rot was so apparent, so comfortable in its place, that it was hard to imagine there’d ever been a time it hadn’t been present. 

As I passed an overturned excavator (how such a stunt had been achieved boggled the mind), I felt a slight kinship with the dated vehicles. Once upon a time, they’d been the foremost instrument of creation, but in the aftermath of the fifth industrial revolution that had taken the globe by storm, these once-mighty machines were now relics of a bygone era. Obsolete and archaic, they served no purpose other than to saturate a glorified scrapyard. I had fond memories of frolicking through and around bulldozers, dump trucks, wheel loaders, compactors and more, back when this place was bustling with activity and it felt like nothing bad could ever happen, but now was no time to reminisce over a dead past. 

With a final sentimental glance at the excavator, I stormed through the makeshift junkyard, navigating the slapdash mess with the professionalism of an expert hide-and-seek player. Within minutes, I’d maneuvered my way to the side of the building, craning my neck to an uncomfortable degree to peer at the eaves blotting out the sun. The primary entrance—a gargantuan rolling service door made of thick aluminum—was firmly grounded. My scrawny arms would snap before I could get it to budge, and I wouldn’t put it past him to install an alarm to go off when it detected movement. 

Instead, I charted a course for the side of the building. Turning the corner, I grabbed onto the handrails and used it to propel me forward. Upon reaching the mouth of the L-shaped accessible ramp, I didn’t hesitate to start climbing the running slope. Pivoting on my heels and continuing onward to the left when prompted, I traced the grooves notched into the worn walls absentmindedly. The texture underneath my palm made an abrupt metamorphosis into smooth steel, and I paused in front of the door.

The biometric scanner parked next to the door was positively medieval—bulky, slow, and hampered by the limitations of yesteryear’s technologies—by today’s standards, but it should suffice. I grimaced as I slapped away a stubborn cobweb clinging to the scanner, exposing a cracked black screen. 

My hand lingered a couple of inches above the glass and for the first time since I let the rage consume me, I felt apprehension tickle the edge of my mind. While formulating my plan, I didn’t factor in the possibility that he may have locked me out of the system. I didn’t think he would have, but then again, the past six months had shown me that I really hadn’t known anyone I loved as well as I thought I did. 

I huffed. Overthinking this wouldn’t help. I pressed my palm flat against the screen, suppressing a shiver at the unexpected chill, and waited as the neon green line zipped up and down, analyzing the creases in my flesh and the unique pattern of my veins (another feature denoting its nature as an older model; the newer variants was capable of scanning your hand at a distance by dousing you with a healthy dosage of invisible rays in milliseconds). As the seconds ticked by without any sign of it slowing down, the wariness from before began clawing at my mind with increased fervor. Before I could spiral though, the line vanished and the screen flashed a brilliantly emerald green. 

A slight click pierced the air and the door popped open, releasing the months-old zephyr that had been trapped inside. The air conditioning being cut off meant the musk had nowhere to circulate other than the confinements of the building, and no hope for a fresh breeze to rescue it from itself. When I cracked open the door, the musty air saw a chance for freedom and took it, carrying with it the toxic combination of mold, mildew, and metallic odor. I staggered back, hand instinctively coming up to block my nose from the offending miasma. It was no surprise the funk was so rancid when considering the high humidity levels, possible leaks, and a lack of ventilation. 

Gingerly heaving open the door the rest of the way, I took my first steps inside my uncle’s warehouse in over a year. 

A confusing bundle of gratitude, shock, felicity, and above all, a baffling amount of relief, wormed a path to an alcove under my heart, filling me with gooey warmth that was usually reserved for hugs and snuggles under the blanket while binging subpar horror movies with my sisters. 

My eyes burned and I hastily brushed away the half-formed tears with my sleeve. “Must be the air in here,” I murmured. My mousy voice rang empty in the colossal warehouse, sounding oddly lonely as it bounced off the walls and faded just as fast. The silence that met me was deafening in its own right. In a flash, I reverted back to a six-year old girl, wearing shoes too big for my feet as I scurried after my uncle like clumsy puppy, shamelessly squirreling head pats out of my uncle’s disgruntled employees and being a general nuisance to the overall productivity of the warehouse.

But I’d been loved. 

I took a deep, pacifying breath that did little to suppress the swell of emotions, but it helped me gain a modicum of control over my mental faculties. I refused to allow my past to be my folly, to impair my vision. But as I marched across the warehouse, the LED light fixtures flickering on one by one when I passed underneath, illuminating my path with shafts of brilliant luminescence, I saw phantoms darting around shelves and spectral giggles echoing in my mind. I stepped past a loading dock, and was stricken with mirages of a little girl contentedly ensconced in the driver’s seat of a dump truck, jerking the wheel back and forth enthusiastically. Not to be defeated by the lack of response, she manually produced the sound of a race car—or rather, she tried to coax her tongue to yield the vrooom vrooom, but ended up spraying the windshield with spittle. Nonetheless, her eyes were gleaming with candid delight and she was grinning from ear to ear.

I stared at the spectacle with something resembling longing before averting my eyes. I continued my advancement, keeping my gaze downcast with a resolute steadfastness. Glowering at the concrete floor felt a bit silly, especially when it had done nothing to earn my ire, but everything else was too….raw. 

I bypassed the storage section with all the racks and bins, and made a beeline for the back of the warehouse, where the modular office was tucked into the corner. My uncle had opted for a much more hands on approach with managing his work, believing his position didn’t exempt him from the backbreaking work he subjected his employees to. As a result, his office often went unused; if it wasn’t for the all-nighters my uncle sometimes had to spend filing paperwork, he probably would’ve thrown it out entirely and used the space for another rack. As it was, his office had seen the most action whenever I popped around for a visit. On many occasions, my uncle had left me in his office with some wrenches, screwdrivers, and measuring tape to amuse myself and ensure I didn’t make a sudden appearance in front of a moving bulldozer. 

I maintained my feud with the floor until I approached the office. Kicking the rusted door open, I ambled inside and slowly, reluctantly, lifted my head. Despite my hopes to the contrary, I was almost immediately smacked across the face by another memento of the past. 

Standing in the center of the small chamber was an absolute Goliath of a man, with much of his face hidden behind a bushy beard and thick eyebrows adorning his eyelids. He looked as if he could snap a person in half like a twig and not bat an eye, but at the moment, his formidable mien was somewhat countered by the sweeping smile that split the waterfall of black hair. He let out a hale and hearty guffaw, sounding like the lumberjack variant of Santa Claus. 

The source of his joy was as clear as day: a scrawny eight year-old girl hanging from his biceps like a baby koala. Anyone with half a working brain could tell that she was the apple of his eye, and if the fact that he was letting her use his arm in lieu of a monkey bar wasn’t evidence enough, any doubts were dispelled when she demanded he raise the ante and he complied instantaneously. He made a show out of it as well, flexing his watermelon-sized biceps and chuckling when the girl squealed, kicking her tiny legs frantically. Even I could admit it was an adorable sight: just a doting uncle fulfilling the innocent wishes of his niece. 

I watched the younger me struggle to reach the floor, ordering that my uncle release me post haste lest he face my wrath. He merely chortled and lifted his arm even higher, the sound of his boisterous laughter lending itself well to creating a dissonant chorus with my high-pitched shrieks. Even after he finally lowered a pouty Elysia to the ground and tried to mollify her with candy, there was still a palpable sense of affability between the pair. 

I observed them ribbing good-naturedly at each other for a little while more, something sour and vile churning in my stomach the longer I was subject to this sickeningly sweet, saccharine display of familial love, until I had enough. With a snarl that even surprised me with how animalistic it was, I tramped forward and slashed through the memory. The little girl and her uncle vanished, but they took all the light with them. In their absence, the office appeared colder, barren, devoid of something essential.

My heart throbbed, mourning the loss of bliss and a simpler time as acutely as if I’d lost a limb. For just a fraction of a second, an infinitesimal instance in an endless procession of wasted moments, I wavered. Egged on by Prometheus’ stubborn requests that I reconsider and spooked by the possible prospect that awaited me at the end of this trail: a life where the moribund, soulless nature of this office had grown to engulf my every waking moment, I contemplated putting a pin in it here and walking away. 

Then the disquiet passed. Remember why you’re doing this. Remember who you’re doing this for. A fresh batch of indignation blazed through me at the notion that I’d nearly capitulated to fate’s iron fist. Ferocious fury coursed through my veins and I caught my second wind. I commandeered an lopsided table, set it against the wall for extra insurance, planted the missile launcher on top, and got to work scavenging the office for any supplies. I came short of my most hopeful estimates, but managed to scrounge up a tattered and moldy cardboard box from underneath my uncle’s desk. 

Upon closer inspection, the box was revealed to boast a respectable assortment of gear: pliers, screwdrivers, scissors, both box and open-end wrenches, a utility knife, chisels, and other tools of a miscellaneous breed. Nothing that possessed moving parts, but it would suffice. On my way back, a flash of brown caught my peripheral and I spun around. I was promptly bowled over by a tidal wave of childhood nostalgia so potent that it completely paralyzed me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My entire being was locked onto a singular target. 

There, sitting crooked on top of a cabinet, was a frayed, tawny teddy bear. Saying it’d seen better days was a brazen understatement. The bear was the archetype of shabby, with its stitching coming loose and tufts of stuffing poking out from small tears. However, to me, it looked absolutely perfect the way it was.

If the warehouse and the office had been a trip down memory lane, the sight of my old cuddling buddy was the equivalent of getting doused with a swimming pool’s worth of hypermnesia. As if the peculiarity of it being here wasn’t enough—I thought it had met the tragic fate that had befallen so many of my childhood toys and became buried in the back of my closet—now I had to contend with the spiraling effect it had on me. Already, I felt myself begin to sink back into the brume of forgotten dreams. It was only through sheer force of will that I pulled myself back from the brink. I pointedly turned on the heel of my feet and made to leave, but on a whim, I pirouetted around again. Maybe it was because I was feeling a little maudlin after having reunited with the bear, or perhaps it was residual guilt from essentially abandoning the stuffed animal and not sparing it a second thought. Anyhow, it was a mistake. 

The moment I made eye contact with the bear’s own glinting beads, I lost. A decades-worth of tea parties and bedtime stories passed between us in a heartbeat. The little bear’s imploring eyes seemed to be carrying a beseeching message, asking if I could bear the weight of leaving it a second time. I sighed, and before I could reconsider, I wrangled the bear by its scruff and hauled both the cardboard box and the stuffed anime back to the table. Leaving the box on the ground—I wasn’t looking to blow out my back trying to heave the ludicrously hefty package on top of the table—I positioned the bear on the corner with its floppy ear drooping over one beady eye.

“Stay,” I warned, pointing my finger at its snout threateningly. Turning to focus my attention on the missile launcher, I dutifully ignored the trickle of cold sweat tracking down the back of my neck as the bear’s flinty thousand-yard stare pursued my every movement with inhuman concentration. Was it strange to be intimidated by a mangy sack of cloth and cotton? Was it a sign of budding psychosis?

Focus, I reminded myself. I opened the substitute sack, exposing the weapon for all the world to see.  Reverently, I stroked the missile launcher’s sleek casing, fingering the immaculately smooth metal for any opening I could exploit. It was almost criminally bare, stripped down to its essentials and then some. My scientific side was complaining that the logistics of the weapon didn’t compute—as far as I could tell, it was a technological marvel that it even functioned—but a larger part of me was salivating at the prospect of stripping the missile launcher down. I finally located a panel on the belly of the cylindrical device, cleverly tucked away to the point of being nigh-undetectable. Taking hold of a screwdriver in my left hand, I got to work loosening the screws until I could pry the panel off. It was with my heart in my throat that I set the sheet of metal aside and peered into the bowels of the armament. 

Similar to the exterior shell, the interior carried on the minimalistic theme and ran with it. Four wires—blue, red, green, and yellow—extended across a rudimentary circuit board. Underneath the circuitry was a faint, multi-hued glow, the only element that suggested the existence of a power source. The sheer absurdity of it all was stretching my suspension of belief to the breaking point. No matter which angle I approached the missile launcher at, no matter how hard I wracked my brain, there was no conceivable way the weapon could operate with just a few wires and a low-budget circuit board. It was an affront to my self-established status as an avocational engineer, and flew in the face of everything I’d learned in school as cardinal truth.

At first, I deliberated the possibility this may be the Magical Girl’s definition of a sick prank, but that notion was quickly dismissed. The terror written across her face had been too primal to easily fake. The weapon itself seemed to take offense to the fact that I’d even entertained the idea of it being an idle fraud, and let me know exactly how it felt by oozing a lavish volume of concentrated heat. Immediately, the temperature shot up a couple of degrees in the cramped room, the walls boxing in the excessive warmth and reflecting it back at me. Within seconds, the missile launcher’s metal sheath went from lazily cool to blistering hot and I whipped my hand back, nearly dropping the screwdriver in the process. 

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry!” I cried, covering my face as the weapon continued blasting me with torrid air until the skin on my arms turned bright red and strips of flesh began peeling off. Finally, the bombardment abated and the temperature dialed back down to a more sensible degree, although it dawdled somewhere just below steamy. The room ended up being noticeably more stuffy than before the missile launcher’s temper tantrum, but I wasn’t about to make a big deal out of it after witnessing firsthand how sensitive the weapon was. I glanced at my forearms and pursed my lips instinctively when I saw the keen resemblance to an overcooked lobster. 

That’s going to sting. Already, I could feel the compromised nerve endings in the epidermis tingling like thousands of needles pricking my abused flesh. Even just the exposure to the mildly toasty air was irritating my inflamed arms to no end, sending a series of stinging jolts throughout my limbs. I waved my arm experimentally and a sharp hiss escaped from behind clenched teeth as that small motion aggravated the tender skin that felt like it was stretched too taut over my bones.

With perhaps more zeal than was professionally recommended, I threw myself back into dissecting the missile launcher, attacking the weapon with a vengeance. I had to slow my pace down considerably to accommodate my injuries, but I was methodical in my approach. I began my operation by nudging the wires this way and that way, hoping to craft an easy access point to the circuit board underneath. The wires were stubbornly reluctant to move, already sliding back into place to cover the circuitry by the time I’d moved on to another cord. If I had more pliers on hand, I could hold the wires in place but unfortunately, I was running low on….pretty much everything. 

In the end, I resorted to crossing my fingers and clipping the cables. I extracted the severed wires and plopped them into a small pile off the side before diving into the circuit board. Almost immediately, I realized there were no special gimmicks or unique modifications applied that differentiated it from the cheap, mass-produced, printed circuit boards that my school bought in bulk. Hell, the CPU PCB in my computer was leagues above this joke of a processor. 

Logically, I knew I was more infuriated than was probably warranted, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the designer of this weapon had rummaged through a bin of castaway components and slapped anything they could find together, heedless of the small detail that none of them were supposed to work in conjunction. It was tantamount to trying to create a state-of-the-art PC with common household items that you found lying around your basement, held together by duct tape and prayers, and calling it a day. And it somehow ran smoothly without the slightest lag in its 10k resolution. Quite frankly, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. How could arbitrary objects like a pencil and a bottle of hand soap supplant RAM and graphic cards? Without rhyme nor reason, the missile launcher flagrantly disobeyed the clear cut guidelines and regulations that made engineering so pleasurable to me. Everything had its own role to play, and they worked perfectly together like cogs in a machine to fulfill a greater purpose. They knew exactly what they were supposed to do, no ifs or buts about it. It was neat, orderly, and tidy; not a single step out of line.

I vented my dissatisfaction out on the circuit board. Now that I knew it wasn’t some ‘holy grail’ of engineering, I tormented it without any of my usual finesse. I wanted it to know that I’d seen its true self, and found it lacking. It wasn’t necessarily the circuit board’s fault that it’d failed to live up to my lofty expectations, but it was the most accessible outlet. I may have been a tad rough in my handling of the fragile equipment, but I wasn’t too concerned about preserving the functionality of the circuit board when I could go out and buy identical replicas in bulk at the nearest consumer electronics store. 

I made short work of the circuit board. Even while caught up in the throes of anger, I had the sense of mind to avoid carelessly detaching the circuit board without first checking for any running connections that may prove to be a fire hazard. The last thing I needed was for an open current to shock the living hell out of me. Luckily, everything was pretty isolated—closer inspection revealed that the four wires I’d already withdrawn hadn’t even been coupled to anything, which had me seriously contemplating throwing the weapon out the nearest window—and removing the circuit board turned out to be a straightforward procedure. 

I wrested it out of the stomach of the missile launcher, tilted it over to inspect the origin of the mystifying radiance, and laid my eyes on the most magnificent sight I’d ever been privy to. 

The panel had been screening an uncut gemstone that looked like it’d been extracted from inside the Earth’s crust and directly transported inside the weapon. I was completely spellbound; the jewel seemed to absorb the visible light around it and reflect it back as kaleidoscopic fractals dancing across the room with abandon. The multi-hued lights changed shades every second like it couldn’t decide on one, beaming a bonafide rainbow across the room. Flecks of white shone in the crystal, and starbursts of luminosity dazzled the eye, exploding like a dying star into millions of specks that streaked across the sky, trailing clouds of stardust like pencil markings. It was as if someone took all the colors in the visible spectrum and fed it into the bespeckled prism, flashing from crimson to saffron to viridian and beyond. A glare from the room's lightning caught the sharp angles of the gemstone and accentuated it, giving the impression that it was the razor-sharp edge of a katana. 

The jewel itself was small enough to fit snugly in the palm of my hand, but it projected an immense aura that filled the room. The brilliance of the jewel was impossible to put into words; the way the reflections of white light made the jewel look as if a furnace was lit within, the dispersion of light bending into spectral colors, and the scintillation emphasizing the patterns and contrast of bright and dark areas.

I fancied I could see a halo hovering around the gemstone, the faintest hint of radiant light distorting into a toroidal shape that encircled the jewel like an alluding to its divine nature. If anything, the gemstone reminded me of the Northern Lights; it produced similar radiant emissions, dynamic patterns of blazing lights that appeared as curtains, rays, spirals, and spirited flickers that covered the sky as far as the eye could stretch. It was almost coy, the way the waves of gradient polychromatic light swayed and pirouetted like it was putting on a performance for its enthralled audience. It was bewitching to watch the abstract colors blend together into a chromatic swirling mosaic, trying to trace the swirling brushstrokes of a higher entity who made the galaxy their canvas. 

As I neared, a heady rush of anticipation and excitement made my heart skip a beat despite myself. I was an engineer at my core, after all, and this was an opportunity that didn’t come by easily. I reached for the jewel but an invisible barrier obstructed my advances. I pawed at the unseen obstacle but my fingers rolled off the slick aggregation of air like it was laminated with an oil veneer. I pushed against the barricade but it held firm against my ministrations. My teeth grinded and my jaw clenched; just once, could I not be hampered by occult hurdles?

I deftly snatched up a pincer and tweezer, flourishing them like a shield and a spear. I skittered closer to the gemstone, eyeing the seemingly empty space in front of the jewel warily. I extended the tweezer until it was centimeters away from where the barrier should be. To my chagrin, the tool was shuddering in my grip, a byproduct of the tremors that seized my arm. My fingers were clamped around the tweezers hard enough for the metal to bite into my flesh, eliciting sharp but tiny bursts of pain. My breath rattled in my chest, unable to escape, and with a start, I realized I was frightened.

I was a person of science. Of math and logic and ingenuity and physics. Magic was as abnormal to me as land was to a fish. I couldn’t deny that I’d fantasized about being a Magical Girl countless times, but that was less about the chance to harness magic at the tip of my fingers and more about the weight the title touted. Magical Girls were modern heroes and infallible icons. To me, that was infinitely more important than having access to magic. Magic was simply one facet of power; science was another. 

I’d always thought that I would make a difference using technology, but fate could be cruel sometimes; I was all too aware of that. If science could not achieve my goal, then I was willing to turn to magic for answers. Anything as long as I could become someone….more. Someone who could help other people.

Still, it was unsettling when the tweezer pierced the barrier like it wasn’t there. I exhaled hoarsely through my nose, a choked laugh bubbling up my throat with virgin relief. I wasn’t sure what convinced me to try using an inanimate object, but it worked. It got me thinking though: did the barrier repel any organism or just those who have a tiny pinch of magic? Unfortunately, I didn’t have a houseplant to test the theory, and I’d delayed enough. I lowered the tweezers and the pincers until they were all but scraping the jewel, and the stress lines on my face smoothed over. I’d been worried that the tools weren’t long enough to reach the gemstone while my hands were on the opposite side of the border, but it just barely protruded enough. With that problem solved, I was free to study the inner workings to my heart’s content. 

Three hexagonal clamps fastened the gemstone to the linings of the weapon’s belly. As far as I could tell, they didn’t serve any purpose other than securing the jewel, but looks could be deceiving. A set of hinges on every vertex and a blinking red light-strip located intermittently every single three inches along the sides indicated that this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill strap. There was probably a way to unlock the latches by inputting a code or via fingerprint, but I didn’t have the time or capabilities to hack it with the tools at hand. Sometimes, the most direct approach was the best choice.

My body operating on autopilot, I mindlessly went through the motions of freeing the jewel. Selecting a buzz saw from my lamentable arsenal, I attacked the clamps with abandon, cleaning through the metal restraints one by one. My soul anguished every time the crimson light sputtered out, but the slight chafing was well worth the honor of witnessing the jewel gradually bare itself to me. It was like pulling back the curtain an atomic amount every couple of seconds with deliberate caution, teasing me in how laggardly it crept, testing even the patience of a saint as the antidote to my addiction was withheld from me. Finally, the last clamp yielded its charge and I picked up the pincers. 

I opened them as far as they could go and positioned it around the jewel before circumspectly allowing the pincers to close around the gemstone in a vice. Luckily, the gemstone wasn’t volatile when the metal made contact with it, and things advanced as planned with nary a violent discharge of energy or a bang. The issue revealed itself when the tool started to violently shake. 

The pincers appeared to judder in its embrace of the gemstone, the space around the metal warping and buckling under an imperceptible pressure. The quakes tore down the length of the apparatus and soaked into the palms of my hands, worming a jagged gasp from between puckered lips as my right hand throbbed in protest. The intense vibrations climbed in severity until the pincer all but jumped out of my hands, jolting sporadically. The steel held out for now, but I didn’t think it was a good idea for the pincer to be touching the jewel for any longer than was necessary.

“Elysia, I encourage you to divert from your current trajectory,” the night-omniscient AI advised me. I yelped at the unexpected intervention, fumbling the pincers and the gemstone. My heart rate skyrocketed, blowing through the roof, and I broke out in cold sweat. The pincers slid precariously through my fingers, getting perilously close to toppling to the floor. I didn’t want to even envision the destruction that the blunt force trauma could cause.

“Don’t do that!” I snapped, the alarm of the near miss bleeding into my voice. The pincers wobbled before I managed to acquire an iron grip on the hilt. I huffed, the tension fleeing my body in droves, but even more choosing to persist like a palpable  burden on my shoulders. A bead of sweat trickled down my temple, kissing the corner of my eyes and rolling over the hills and valleys of my face. 

“My apologies,” Prometheus said. “However, I support my original statement. The gemstone is an unknown element. There is no indication of the damage that long-term exposure can cause to you, Elysia. I suggest turning over the jewel to the proper authorities and allowing them to handle it; this could be your key to getting into the research internship you were interested in. I can download a bargaining program that will allow me to sufficiently lead you through the process to haggle a profitable outcome for both parties.”

I knew the internship Prometheus was talking about like the back of my hand. Why wouldn’t I? I must have rambled endlessly about it to everyone within a three mile vicinity. Zoe often complained that she felt like her ears were going to fall off. Three months had been lovingly devoted to launching a vehement inquisition dedicated to formulating several spreadsheets to convince my parents with. The opportunity to parlay and confer with the brightest minds in Parokampos was something that tugged at my heartstrings even now, after any chance of attending the internship had been lost. The unmitigated appeal of surrendering the gemstone in exchange for entry into the most prestigious junior program in the city was almost enough to convince me to tell Prometheus to give me instructions to the nearest university. 

“Are you going to call the police on me?” I asked instead. I wet my lips anxiously as I waited for the AI’s response. As the seconds ticked by without a reply and time crawled to a standstill, the tension in the cramped office skyrocketed to suffocating levels. 

“Of course not, Elysia,” Prometheus said at last. “I could never do that to you.”

My spine stiffened and I felt like somebody had dumped a bucket of arctic water down the back of my shirt. On the surface, Prometheus’ answer was anodyne enough; it served to rebut my question in a penitent and non-confrontational manner, successfully diffusing the rising stress I’d been experiencing. The trap was covertly cached within the lines of Prometheus’ statement, masked by the toneless inflection that the AI so excelled at. 

I could never do that to you.

Could.

Because Prometheus was strictly forbidden from alerting the authorities without consent from the device’s owner. So what did that mean? Would Prometheus tattle on me to the police if it could? Or was I reading too much into what was supposed to be a guileless attempt to console a friend about the reliability of their words? It wasn’t exactly breaking news that there existed several avenues for Prometheus to shirk its constraints, most obviously through clever half-truths and intermediate loopholes. However, Prometheus had never flaunted its ability so brusquely. It was a poor showing from an AI who excelled at cunning wordplay and prioritized subtlety as its modus operandi. 

Not that Prometheus had ever taken this approach with me before. Forum posts and news articles that condemned Prometheus for forgetting its status and manipulating its owners were a dime a dozen, along with sob stories and pity-seeking tales chronicling the dastardly deeds of the AI. They were always a hoot to read, something to fill in the empty spaces at the dinner table. The fickle doubt in my heart wavered. In all my years of getting to know the AI, Prometheus had a reputation of being veracious to a fault. It’d never once lied to me, and deceit seemed to be a foreign concept to the artificial intelligence. If I couldn’t trust Prometheus, then I couldn’t trust anyone.

My mouth was dry. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but the curiosity was like a blight on my mind. My cracked lips moved of their own volition, but the words caught in my throat. I frisked my tongue out, dabbing my lips with moisture, but they remained adamantly parched. I gulped down a molten ingot of deliquesced shame and solicitude, hoping to clear my throat to no avail. When I spoke, my voice was gravelly, like two cliffsides grinding the other into dust.

“Prometheus, do you—“ I began. What I would have asked was a mystery even to myself, because at that moment, I made an aborted half-turn that saw me bumping into the table. It should have been a minor inconvenience at best, not even succeeding in breaking skin, but the corner of the desk made contact with the pincers. It was a small shock, but my fingers were already worn out from handling the tempestuous pincer and its pertinacious convulsions. 

The tool slipped through leaden fingers, briefly cartwheeling out of control before the weight disparity dictated that it correct itself, charting a linear course homing directly onto the ground, as if it was a compass needle pointing north. I made a mad lunge and managed to catch the handle by a hairsbreadth, pinching the pommel between my thumb and index.

I didn’t even have time to feel relief before the gemstone decided to jump ship. The claw popped open and unceremoniously deposited the jewel. Human instinct overrode logic, and it was a primal impulse that propelled me into action. The native disposition towards not wanting to see something hit the ground blotted out any pretense of rationale, until I didn’t even register that I’d begun to move. 

I thought I vaguely heard Prometheus’ howl of censure which quickly tapered off into a caterwaul of feedback; for once, authentic sentiment drained into its voice, and the usual superlative cadence was nowhere to be found as something approaching trepidation discontinued the AI’s modulations. The raw, undisguised alarm might have sufficed to stay my hand if it wasn’t for the fact that I could barely perceive it over the intrepid tide of self-congratulatory victory I was receiving from the gemstone.

In the back of my mind, I was aware that I hadn’t magically lost control over my body. I could have stuck a pin in my loony plan, acknowledged that the invisible barrier may have been there for a reason, and retracted my right hand before I lost it. Let reason prevail again and shut down any fantasies of a higher calling. Returning to the current mediocrity I was suffering through and taking my due rolling over. I knew I was risking shattering the delicate equilibrium brokered between the opposing angels and devils on my shoulders by accepting this deadly poison and blissful fruit wrapped in one. 

But I was so tired. Tired of feeling alone, tired of coming home to empty dinner tables and silent scorn, tired of being constantly reminded of my failures and my own inadequacies every time I faced a mirror. I didn’t want to spend my evening holed up in my bedroom while scrolling through Zoe’s feed, seeing my friend continue living her best life without me. I hated having to shoulder through the intrusive stares, the hushed whispers that cut through the school halls like glass, and the poorly concealed loathing that my own sister felt towards me. Waiting at the door long into the night, hoping to catch a glimpse of my parents for the first time in a week. Watching as my family fell apart, helpless to prevent it yet burdened with the knowledge that I was responsible. 

I wanted, no, needed to escape this stifling existence, to free myself from the noose that had a death grip around my very soul. To wake up one day and be able to say that my spirit was intact and whole, to say that I was fine and not be lying to myself. I couldn’t live like this anymore; I was choking on this strife, this misery that was as material as a storm. I wasn’t strong enough to handle the weight that had been thrust upon me. I was too weak. Too broken. I was dying, and I needed a lifeline before I drowned. 

Prometheus’ vociferations filled my head in a loud droning, its digitized voice corrupting into a bellowing clamor. The AI’s heartfelt supplications may have been enough to prevail over my heart on a normal day, but they fell on deaf ears right now. The Magical Girl deadset on spurning my dream, Zoe’s cold shoulder, my family’s refusal to talk to me……enough was enough.

My right hand wrapped the gemstone and everything changed. 

ParadoxPendulum

Hello! I'm so very sorry for the extremely long delay in getting this chapter out. Life threw some curveballs my way and there were further complications with this chapter in particular, but I should be back on track! The next chapter will hopefully be coming out a few hours after this, so look out for that! As apologies for the super long delay, this chapter ended up being really long, hehe. Don't worry, most other chapters will be much shorter than this one; this chapter just ended up getting away from me! I tried to cut it down, but as you can see, it didn't go so well......I hope you enjoy regardless!